Political and economic interests of France in Кazakhstan: a view from the twenty-first year of the XXI century

Abstract

After the collapse of the USSR, the region of Central Asia attracted a lot of attention from politicians and entrepreneurs of Western countries, including France. The priority of the national interests of the Fifth Republic in the region is the establishment of political, economic, cultural relations with the largest Central Asian state, Kazakhstan. The purpose of the article is to analyze the history and current state of French-Kazakh relations, to study the entire complex of French interests in Kazakhstan during 1991-2021. The article proves that over the 30 years of its independence, Kazakhstan has built relations with France, observing the foundations of its traditionally multi-vector foreign policy, and France has all this time considered Kazakhstan as the main bulwark of regional stability and security. An indicator of the level of relations between the two countries was that France became the first EU country with which Kazakhstan signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2008, and in 2021 - the Roadmap for Economic and Investment Cooperation until 2030. The results of the analysis of the study indicate that the most dynamic relations between the two countries are developing in the economic sphere, and the key interests of 170 French companies are mainly associated with the joint development of large oil, gas and uranium fields. It has been proven that the COVID-19 pandemic, which negatively affected the global economy, led to a significant drop in French investment activity in Kazakhstan. Another factor that will spoil bilateral relations is the pressure of the Kazakh authorities on the opposition, facts of human rights violations in Kazakhstan. The analysis presented in this article, the study of the positive and negative experience of these bilateral relations will be important for the development of appropriate strategies of international interaction for other post-Soviet countries, in particular, Ukraine.